Editorial: Encouraging news during discouraging days

Exciting days are just around the corner.

I’m not talking about the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.

I’m talking about the summer calendar. What is your church doing this summer?

Discouraging news

Yes, many of us are thinking about what will happen at the SBC annual meeting. Will the Law Amendment pass? If it does, what will it mean for our church?

Many are shaking their heads at yet another leadership scandal in the SBC, again involving former staff members of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Since our reporting and my editorial last week on the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board meeting, we’ve received calls, texts and emails from Texas Baptists concerned about North American Mission Board funding. They are right to be concerned. They are right to ask questions.

It’s not unreasonable to expect an organization that receives your money to tell you what they do with that money. I say that as the executive director of a donor-supported organization. It’s also not unreasonable for you to question those organizations and to expect straight, clear and accurate answers to your questions.

We’re thinking about these things, too, along with a lot more going on in Baptist life in Texas and elsewhere. And there is a lot. We’ll continue reporting on Baptist business in the coming days, however pleasant or unpleasant it may be.

But let’s take a step back from all of that for a moment and revel in what thousands of Baptist churches plan to do this summer. Exciting days are ahead.

Encouraging news

Baptist churches are gearing up for Vacation Bible School. Teams of volunteers are decorating, gathering food and craft items, and practicing songs. They will welcome, collectively, thousands of children over the next few weeks.

Many of these churches will be overrun by children wearing out volunteers—for a whole week. Can you hear their yells, laughter, running feet and singing? I’m talking about the children.

It will be great, and most of these churches will do it all over again next summer, no matter how worn out they are at the end this summer.

In addition to sending children, youth and adults to any number of summer camps—VBS on steroids—Baptist churches will conduct week-long music camps in tandem with, separate from or instead of VBS.

In a few weeks, I hope to attend the performance concluding one such week. It will be as much fun watching and listening to the kids’ musical as it will be seeing their parents’ and grandparents’ pride and joy.

In some places, VBS and music camp are community-wide events. Churches work together to put them on, and the whole community looks forward to them. Such events can be taken for granted. They’re so common, so expected, as to be one of the unsung joys of summer (no pun intended).

In just a few days, teenagers from across Texas will start participating in Texas Baptists’ Bounce disaster recovery mission trips in Lake Charles, La., and Mora County, N.M. Two Bounce church planting trips are scheduled for Tarrant County and the Seattle, Wash., area.

These trips often involve scores of students and adults serving others. They always involve sweat, dirt and Jesus. More than one student’s life has been changed as the result of serving others through Bounce. If nothing else, they discovered a love for construction.

Churches will do mission work locally, around the state, around the United States and some abroad. They will do construction, perform musicals, distribute information about local churches, teach sports, put on VBS, and some will provide basic medical service. They will tell people about Jesus.

Mission trips take a lot of planning, and they’re typically expensive—all for one week. Yet, a mission trip can change a person like nothing else. Mission trips can change the way we think about and see other people. They can bring us out of our shell. They can give us confidence in the gospel and in communicating it.

Don’t let the less enjoyable news of these days get in the way of soaking in these joys.

Take courage

Don’t get so lost in denominational business you don’t want to think about or talk about—but need to—that you don’t see and talk about the good news of the gospel being shared in hundreds of ways in hundreds of places by hundreds of people.

Don’t get so lost in the discouraging, frustrating and aggravating things that come with people trying to follow Jesus together—and there really are discouraging, frustrating and aggravating things—that you can’t see the joy that doesn’t depend on our faults and failings.

Don’t let the real need for accountability in Baptist life and the challenge of working through difficult or unpleasant things in our shared life dim the light of Jesus’ good news.

Whatever happens during the SBC’s 2024 annual meeting, if the Law Amendment passes or doesn’t and whatever follows, none of it will stop children singing songs about Jesus; teenagers carrying the hope of the gospel; adults giving their time, their money, themselves, trusting Jesus will change lives with it.

Take courage and remember: Even amid discouraging days, there is encouraging news—the good news of Jesus, who conquered sin once and for all, who rose victorious over death and who entrusts us with carrying this good news to others.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.